Dressed in a numbered red jumpsuit and sitting in an isolation cell in a Larimer County jail, Travis Forbes considered his options.

The 31-year-old already faced a possible life sentence for allegedly raping, beating and burning a Fort Collins woman. But by his reasoning, he still had earning potential.

He wrote a letter to The Denver Post offering a deal: “How much will your paper pay me for an interview?”

As a further inducement, he wrote: “The dark is barbarous, the primal wilderness. It’s the source of birth, pain, passion. It’s destructive and creative at the same time.

“We’ve been estranged from the dark, we miss it. We miss its healing violence that rips us apart and remakes us …”

The Post made no financial offer for his implied promise to recount his dark deeds, and Forbes later refused to meet with a reporter.

But within days, Forbes was talking — to police.

According to 9News, he told Denver police they could find the body of 19-year-old Kenia Monge buried near Keenesburg. The Denver District Attorney’s Office said that after persuading Monge to enter his van, he killed her.

On Thursday, DA Mitch Morrissey charged him with first-degree murder related to Monge’s disappearance and death. He will remain in the Larimer County Detention Center until he is formally advised of the new charge in Denver District Court on Sept. 23.

The dark writings in the letter to The Post — read by jailers and stamped “Mail screened at LCDC” — weren’t Forbes’ own. They are from “War Surf,” a science fiction book by M.M. Buckner. The futuristic tale is about a wealthy executive who jumps into extraterrestrial war zones for sport, his antics recorded and broadcast online.

If allegations about Forbes are true, its easy to see why he identified with the passage.

At 17, Forbes broke into many Fort Collins homes and businesses late at night and used the loot to buy drugs, he said. After serving burglary prison sentences, he couldn’t resist going out late at night, even when it got him in trouble. He violated curfew 43 times, court records say.

In recent years, he hasn’t changed much.

While renting space at Deby’s Bakery and Cafe at 2369 S. Trenton Way in Aurora, he often worked well past midnight making gluten-free granola bars, Deby’s owner Monica Poole said. He was a nightclub regular as well.

His behavior went from unusual to bizarre in the days after April 1, when he met Monge at 2:30 a.m.

The next evening, an employee saw Forbes standing on top of a large walk-in freezer in a back room, apparently retrieving something. He waited impatiently until other employees left, Poole said.

She later found power tools in a tool box left next to the freezer. A Lowe’s Home Improvement store receipt was found nearby, showing purchases for 1x4s and a sheet of plywood, materials police speculated he could have used to build a box.

After the employees went home, neighbors of the business saw men burning something in a large barrel behind Deby’s. It got so hot that green paint bubbled off the outside of the barrel and asphalt underneath melted.

When Poole later asked Forbes what he had been burning, he claimed it was marijuana. Poole said she believed he was likely destroying evidence, like his and Monge’s clothing.

That night, a surveillance camera captured Forbes rolling a cooler that was duct-taped shut into the building. Forbes then turned off the camera. He later explained to Poole that he wanted to change clothes and then said he wanted to burn the marijuana. He often lied, she said.

Poole said she noticed Forbes had a gash on his left arm after Monge went missing. Forbes claimed he was attacked by a homeless man while sleeping in his van.

Detectives discovered that Forbes had been looking up websites about missing-person cases on Poole’s office computer.

A few weeks later, Forbes came to Poole and offered to sell $1,000 worth of oats for $100 and ultimately agreed to $50. He said he was going to change his name and leave the country because “that girl ruined my life,” Poole said.

He then drove a friend’s vehicle to Austin, Texas, where he was soon arrested for stealing the vehicle and returned to Colorado. Car-theft charges were later dropped, and Forbes was released.

At 5:30 a.m. July 5, a 31-year-old wine saleswoman leapt out of the window of her burning upper-floor apartment in Fort Collins. She had been raped and severely beaten. She is now in a rehabilitation program.

On the weekend after the woman was attacked, Forbes was with a woman and acting “suspicious” in the early-morning hours when he was arrested again.

Days later he was charged with two counts of attempted murder in connection with the attack on the Fort Collins woman.

Kirk Mitchell is a general assignment reporter at The Denver Post who focuses on criminal justice stories. He began working at the newspaper in 1998, after writing for newspapers in Mesa, Ariz., and Twin Falls, Idaho, and The Associated Press in Salt Lake City. Mitchell first started writing the Cold Case blog in Fall 2007, in part because Colorado has more than 1,400 unsolved homicides.

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